


nothing but the water [bring my soul to bare]

by voodoochild



Category: The Hour
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Brainwashing, F/M, Hallucinations, Mental Coercion, Mind/Mood Altering Substances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 10:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/760335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Room 101 takes many different forms. All of them involve her.  (Takes place in a mirror universe, consider yourselves warned.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing but the water [bring my soul to bare]

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Lil, for her prompt of "don't you know, I'm not your ghost any more". Takes place in a dystopic mirror universe, but NOT the one from "just a pawn, ready to advance". In this one, things went differently between Lix and Randall - in this one, he had to kill her because the brainwashing wouldn't take. Consider yourselves warned for brainwashing, nonconsensual drug use, references to murder, and assorted creepiness.

Even Mr. Brown isn't exempt from re-education, from Room 101. Even Mr. Brown must be made pure once again.

They take his tailored suits and sharp-edged glasses, give him grey trousers and a grey shirt and dirty him up so that he could be any prole from the streets. They inject him with who-knows-what, enough so that his head is spinning and the numbers in his blood are melting. Three is perfect, but now it's not three, it's five, or two, or two plus two equals five.

He remembers the cell from last time, lying on the floor where they've dumped him. It was Her cell, the one he put her in when she wouldn't listen. It still smells like the sea.

He wonders when they'll send the girl in. They do it every year, take some prole girl from Chiswick with pretty blue eyes and dark curly hair (if it isn't black, they'll dye it) and teach her the accent. Feed her a script through an earpiece, and every year, he pretends to break for them. Give them fodder for his file, show that he still has a weakness to be eradicated.

No one comes. 

Some interminable time later, they drag him out to a MedLab. Inject him with more drugs and drop him into an iso-room. This is new and different, and while he's tried to keep his mind straight, the drugs are making it difficult. The walls are creeping in - objectively, he knows they aren't, but perception is everything - and he curls up in the corner, knees to his chest. Which is when he hears Her.

"Ridiculous man. You can't get one over on a program you designed."

She isn't there. She's dead, and she's been dead for nearly twenty years.

"Well, of course I am," her voice says, irritation ringing sharp in the iso-room. He doesn't know where they've found the girl, but this time, they've gotten the accent right at least. "But that doesn't mean I'm not here."

He opens his eyes, and she's sitting opposite him. And it's her, it's Lix, not some prole with blonde roots and too much Essex in her voice. She smirks, crosses her legs in her regulation white trousers.

"This is new," he says, stupidly. "You've never actually been here."

"Darling, you've never actually needed me to be here. Worse, you've forgotten me."

And it pierces his heart, the truth of it. He can't recall the precise pitch of her laugh, has forgotten the slope of her spine as she lay next to him. There are dozens of things, hundreds even, that exist only in his memories, and those are fading. 

If he were a true leader, a true believer, he should want her to fade. He killed her, after all. But it's the one atrocity among all the rest that he regrets. 

"Why won't you leave?"

"Do you want me to?"

He lowers his head, can't bear looking at her any longer. He doesn't speak for a long time, but she keeps repeating herself until he finally says in a small voice, "No. I never wanted you to leave me. I never will."

The buzzer on the iso-room sounds, the Observer's voice coming over the speaker, cutting through her laughter. 

"Thank you, Mr. Brown. We'll take you home now."

As they lead him out, he swears he can feel Lix's hand slip into his. She isn't there, he knows she isn't, even through the drugged-haze, but he can still hear her:

_Hold out a little longer next time, darling. I may just let you be._


End file.
